


An Overdue Visit

by disastrous_detail



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Banter, Canonical Character Death, Post-Oblivion Crisis, Slight Canon Divergence, in which the agent confronts mannimarco instead of the Hero of Kvatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27287650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disastrous_detail/pseuds/disastrous_detail
Summary: Mannimarco receives an unexpected guest at Echo Cave
Kudos: 8





	An Overdue Visit

**Author's Note:**

> this work is an unofficial sequel to [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184195)

The hour grows late.

Another day coasts by, joining the vast sands of time, indiscernible among the grains.

Even all of these years of this life, natural and not, he still feels as though he stands alone on a shore, overlooking a vast ocean.

The sight is not unlike the shorelines of home, of distant warm summers, but now, with eyes weary, tired of staring, he longs to sink beneath the tides and enter the abyssal depths.

The black waters of the cave stir instead. A draft.

Somewhere further within the dark of Echo Cave, a rotting, rusted door screeches as it shuts.

His following had only taken the cave from a gang of paper-mages just mere weeks ago. Hardly a place for an old man of living blood and flesh like him to linger.

And for all the times he had living flesh, the cold never bothered him, but the damp, musty cave air did.

The eremites insisted he remain here, out of sight of public eye, and even further from the grasp of the Mages’ Guild. He still coordinates their attacks, even going himself to destroy and terrorize Bruma’s Guild Hall.

They save him, his eremites and cult, seeing him as the mortal god he became during the Warp in the West. 

Little do they know about the pains in his chest, the cough that produces black and red sputum. Only one in his cult knows his condition, but he imagines they’re dead by now.

The others will learn soon, however, and they will insist he preserve his living form, undergo the process of becoming a lich once again. 

Mannimarco pockets a bloodied handkerchief into his robes. He doesn’t know if becoming a lich could save him now.

The figure nears. He knows who she is the moment he spies her silhouette in the brazier’s light, how the shadows shift and shape around her form. So similar to that time, he can’t mistake her.

And as she steps into the light, her features revealed. They are aged. Untimely so. His memory has faded. He can’t remember her precise age but knows it’s like a drop in a pond compared to his own.

Mannimarco straightens up where he stands next to a table, to have a semblance of dignity,

“And here I was expecting Traven’s star pupil.”

What was her name? Curses, he can’t place it. The Agent-Girl smiles.

“How about an old friend?”

“That would do.”

He unthinkingly places a hand on a crystalline and silver box on the table. The Agent stalks forward, casting off the cloak of chameleon. He comments,

“I don’t suppose Bolor got the door for you.”

She affirms his suspicions with a slight nod,

“He was a tricky one.”

If it turned out she slew everyone to get here, Mannimarco wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. He has a feeling he won’t get the chance to see for himself. She would only risk being here, in Cyrodiil, for one reason.

The Agent stares at him with a Blade’s trained eye, watching for the slightest change in body language, but then, her eyes crease with sadness. Her lips twist into a frown.

“I can’t tell if you’re actually him or not.”

“Only in the flesh.”

She snorts at the pun. 

“Alright, it’s definitely you.”

“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” Mannimarco narrows his eyes, willing his vision to clear. It doesn’t work.

“Rather, to _whom_?”

“One of yours. That Hassildor fellow, I believe…? He told me everything I needed to track you down.”

The Agent took two steps, roundabout, coming closer. Mannimarco took two steps as well but in retreat.

Janus was one of Mannimarco’s oldest acquaintances, sharing a strange solidarity in undeath. Yet, it did not surprise him to know the vampire would so easily let the information slip. The vampire had to keep an uneasy alliance with the guild, lest they expose him for what he is.

“I remember when Janus was still a human. Quite a talented young thing. It’s a shame he sees himself the way he does. He’s more powerful than he’s ever been. Perhaps I’ll go pay him a visit once we’re done here?”

His words mean to stall, but she sees right through it. She still stops at the table.

“Perhaps.”

Her gloved hand comes to rest on the crystalline and silver box on it.

The urge to strike her for the intrusion flashes across his mind, but he narrowly quells it. The Agent is chaotic, unpredictable. There is still more to be learned from her than what met the eye.

If she were to kill him, then she should have done it moments before. That was the only certainty about her.

She leaves a small vial on top of the box. It is no longer than her finger, and the liquid inside is the color of honey. The quantity alone is more than enough to kill him several times over. Less than a drop is needed for a fatal dosage.

Without even having to think about it, a chuckle leaves his lips as a gasp. He coughs into his robe sleeve. The Agent backs away.

Owned only by the elite of the elite, of course, the poison’s ingredients are exclusive to the Planes of Oblivion. Yet, used by different dynasties for all the same reasons: to eliminate inconvenient bastards, to snuff out overly-ambitious heirs, to murder siblings, to put away unruly elders and paramours.

Only a conjurer can even access any of the ingredients, and only a powerful one can do it continuously. Nowadays, it is an unspoken rule that this task falls to the Imperial Battlemage, but Mannimarco remembers how the tradition started. With him.

How strange that the poison would find its way to him again. Perhaps poison was meant to honor him with merciful euthanasia. It was a sleeping, peaceful little death, and there were always worse ways of eliminating one’s enemies.

Mannimarco takes the small vial of poison and tosses it over his shoulder into the water behind them.

Because despite everything, his long life, he does not wish to die.  
  
Or perhaps, he doesn't wish to die like an inconvenient political opponent or a failed senator. He is the King of Worms, even if just a mortal shell of his former self, and he deserves a greater death. He wants to die in wizard's duel because it is more fitting, but he may not die yet. One final trick remains up his sleeve, hiding.

“Long ago, I collected Vanus from the ruins of our final battle. I lovingly preserved his corpse, calcified his heart, and kept it for himself. I wonder, what parts of you am I going to keep?”

The Agent doesn’t immediately respond to it. She strains,

“And I… Did not come completely unprepared.”

Jade glints from underneath her shirt collar, just below her breast bone. An amulet.

An amulet that he had spent centuries searching for, stolen from him by Arctus, his former rival.

Rightfully, _his_ amulet.

With no further trouble at all, she resists his attempt to enthrall her.

"Then we'll see how prepared you actually are."  
  
He wards himself against mundane steel and paralysis with a gesture. She conjures the same shields and comes at him, knives drawn. Ebony. Each one a boon from the Emperor himself, but he imagines her loyalties no longer lie with the Septims. And so, she still takes after him in more ways than one, willing or not.   
  
  


The fighting does not last long.

What feels like a punch goes to his abdomen, but he knows better, having been stabbed before. This time, he cannot feel his magicka. It is sapped from him. He loses his balance and is caught as he falls back. Arms hold him aloft while his life-blood soaks the cave floor, black in the guttering brazier and candle light.

Hair graces his cheek. For a second, he mistakes her for another.

The pain should be worse, but the poison that saps his magicka steals away agony of the knife between his ribs. 

He fades, knowing his legacy preserved, and an image of the splendor of Aetherius stretches before him in his mind’s eye. 

“Well done.”

And with that sigh, The King of Worms was no more.   
  
Alone now, the Agent draws away from the body, the deed done, but pauses before the table once again. She takes the box and places it on Mannimarco's chest, positioning a limp hand to cover it. If this were to be his mortal grave, she knows it's what he would've wanted.  
  
With that, the Agent leaves, the brazier and candles gutter to their ends, and the cavern's darkness closes over all.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> i kind of got the headcanon that the Oblivion!Mannimarco fight was so easy because Mannimarco's mortal manifestation was already dying at the time, so the pc just came and finished him off, pretty much. 
> 
> in this instance, i wrote mannimarco having a rare form of tuberculosis, and wrote this in general because i wanted to briefly write about the mannimarco/agent relationship being one akin to mentor/student, but fleetingly pawn/manipulator. i think it'd be an ego boost for him to have a legacy, but he kills a lot of his own following/gets them killed + he also doesn't seem like the type to have kids, but who knows?


End file.
